The Tuesday my whole team quit via Slack within 4 hours

Back in March at my startup in Austin, we lost 3 senior devs in a single afternoon. One guy just typed "I'm out" and went dark. Our project manager Sarah had to cancel a client demo because we had zero backend coverage. Has your office ever hit a critical mass of people leaving at once where you just knew things were broken beyond one bad week?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel5931mo ago

3 senior devs gone in one afternoon is rough, that's basically your whole backend gone. Sarah must have felt like she was watching a car crash in slow motion. Did anyone in management try to have honest conversations with them before that day, or was it just radio silence until the Slack messages hit?

thea8571mo ago

Have you tried keeping a running list of what each senior dev actually wants beyond just salary? I learned the hard way that most of them leave because they feel ignored, not underpaid. I had a guy quit on me once and his exit interview was basically "I told you three months ago I needed more say in architecture decisions and you just nodded." I started doing monthly 15 minute one-on-ones where the only rule is they bring the topics and I shut up and listen. What kind of warning signs did you see from that team before they walked?